Archive by Author
La Toussaint (All Saints’ Day) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Oct 24, 2016
As Tim mentioned in a recent post, Halloween traditionally wasn’t celebrated in France and has only been exported to France is recent years from American traditions. Even when I was living in France around eight years ago, you wouldn’t see children trick-or-treat in the streets of Paris. Rather, some friends would hold small Halloween parties and…
French: Regional Variants Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Oct 17, 2016
It’s easy to forget that French is a living language that is in a constant state of flux. We know this to be true, of course, because of new words that are added to the French dictionary each year, or the development of verlan. But sometimes it is easy to forget that language is very…
Le Temps: Both Time and Weather? Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Oct 10, 2016
In French, le temps can mean both “time” and “weather”–which can be a bit confusing for new French learners. In French, le temps when referring specifically to time refers to time in the abstract. That means that you cannot ask the equivalent of “What time is it?” in French (Quel temps est-il, which is not correct). Rather, you would ask…
Pesky Pronouns: Y and En Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Oct 4, 2016
In French, the most well known pronouns, of course, are je (I), tu (you singular), il/elle/on (he/she), nous (we), vous (you plural/formal), ils/elles (they). But there are many other–and more confusing–pronouns as well. The peskiest of these–and the most difficult for many French learners to master–is y and en. These pronouns are called, more precisely, adverbial pronouns because they actually act as adverbs, too. They replace both nouns…
La Poésie (French Poetry) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Sep 26, 2016
It can be very difficult for non-native French speakers to read, comprehend, and even enjoy poetry in French. This is because the language can be more florid than in prose, there may me multiple layers of meaning not easily deduced by the non-native reader, and it may depend on cultural references. But, alas, not all is…
The French Causative Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Sep 19, 2016
The causative construction in French is somewhat self-explanatory. This kind of grammatical construction occurs when the subject causes something to happen rather than doing the action themselves. So, for example, a causative construction would be needed if you are describing that someone else will do the action of the sentence besides the subject of the sentence…
Les Adjectifs Démostratifs (Demonstrative Adjectives) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Sep 13, 2016
What are demonstrative adjectives, you may ask? While the term may sound scary, we use them all of the time. Demonstrative adjectives are adjectives that “demonstrate” or point out a particular noun. In English, these include this, that, these, and those. In French, there are only four adjectifs démonstratifs: ce, cet, cette, and ces. As with most adjectives in French, they must agree…